It was the same Heloise Fordham used to occupy, and it seemed as if she was there again at my side, as I stood looking at the pretty ingrain carpet and the single bed, with its snow-white draperies, the low chair near the window, and the table for Gertie’s work, and the swinging-shelf for her books.
“It is a pretty room,” I said, “and it looks as it did when Heloise was here.”
“Who?” Gertie asked, sweeping her hair back from her forehead, just as I had seen Heloise do so many times. “Who did you say used to be here?”
“Heloise Fordham, a young girl about my age, or a little older, whose mother occupied this cottage twelve or thirteen years ago,” I replied; and Gertie rejoined:
“Why, that is my name, too!”
“Is it?” I asked, and she rejoined:
“Yes, Gertrude Heloise. I write it Gertrude H. for short. Don’t you know?”
I did not know, and I had no suspicion of that which, had I known it then, would have taken my senses away, I verily believe.
“Tell me about your friend,” she said. “Was she pretty, and good, and happy? I like to know who has occupied my room before me. At Stonewark, where we were a few weeks last summer, they said my room was haunted by a girl who killed herself for love. Auntie did not wish me to sleep there. She’s a bit superstitious, but I was not afraid. I liked it, and tried to keep awake nights to see the ghost which threw itself out of the window just at midnight, but I always went to sleep before it came. Where is Heloise, now?”
I did not know, but, questioned by the eager little girl, I told a part of the story, and then, as she grew interested and begged for “the whole, the very whole,” I told it her, thinking there was no harm in telling, as no one could be wronged. Heloise was either married or dead, the latter probably, or she would have written to me, and so it was no matter if I did tell her story and Abelard’s to the child who listened so intently, her eyes filling with tears, which rolled down her cheeks when I spoke of the dead man lying on the grass, his face all wet with blood and a withered white rose pressed inside his flannel shirt. I suppose she cried for him, and to a certain extent I dare say she did, though her first words were: “Poor fellow, I’m so glad he didn’t let Godfrey be killed.”